The mixed blessings of extra water

A new addition to the "mixed blessings" file: The town of Payson,
Arizona, will soon get relief from its perennial water shortage, having
cut a deal
with utility power-broker Salt River Project for a share of the water
from the nearby C.C. Cragin Reservoir (formerly known as the Blue Ridge
Reservoir). You can't blame Payson residents for being overjoyed by this
news; they have been living with rigid restrictions such as
town-designated "water conservation levels" for some time.

An up side of this enforced community awareness,
however, has been an admirable decrease of nearly 20 gallons per
household in daily usage over a ten year period ending in 2006. A
visitor driving through the attractive mountain town will indeed notice
few lawns and much native and low-water-use landscaping, visible
evidence of residents' and businesses' commitment to water thriftiness.
It helps that native plants include picturesque Ponderosa pines,
Manzanitas, and a nice variety of wildflowers.

In retrospect, it seems kind of silly that the reservoir's water hasn't
been available to Payson until now, but its history echoes that of much
Western U.S. resource-use history: the mines had a hand in it. In the early 1960s, Phelps Dodge Corporation built the dam on East
Clear Creek in a complicated arrangement with Salt River Project in
exchange for water rights on the Black River, near its Morenci copper
mine in the Eastern part of the state. Once the deal was no longer
beneficial for the mining company, they sold the reservoir outright to
Salt River Project, which is now free to sell water to the thirsty towns
in the region.

Herein lies the mixed blessing. Like many mountain towns around the
West, Payson both benefits and suffers from its desirable geography.
Only a one-to-two hour drive from the metro Phoenix area, it sees a
large influx of visitors, especially in the summer. These visitors now
drive the economy of this former logging mill town, providing service
industry and other jobs to locals. Many visitors like it so well they
buy second homes or retire there, which broadens the tax base and
supplies construction jobs but also drives up the median home cost
(still an astonishing $221,262
in recessionary 2010) and, of course, increases the demand for water.

Now that there's a reliable supply, will growth increase? Will Payson's
admirable conservation practices, developed out of necessity, devolve
into the water-hogging ways of other Arizona municipalities, or will the
town teach the rest of us lessons in sustainability? Finally, where
does this situation fall in the larger ethical debate over exploiting
dammed waterways in the first place? Stay tuned.

Essays in the A Just West blog are not written by High Country News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.

Dr. Jacqueline Wheeler is the Writing Programs Associate Director at Arizona State University.

More from Water

This isn't necessarily good news for the national forest, since Payson's growth over the years has been facilitated through land trades that have moved the town further and further into the Tonto. When I was there in 1999 or so, looking at the developments enabled through multiple land exchanges, developers were cutting down forest, building big houses (one development had hangars instead of garages) and then naming the subdivisions after whatever flora and fauna had been displaced. It was a real pity. Homes that looked like the ones vacationing Phoenicians had left behind, with not much difference other than the climate.